I love the books. I only haven't read the first one recently because some bastard borrowed my copy and won't own up. Phooey. But, yes, much more interesting than the films, although the films have their own strange appeal. I agree that the Soviet-Bureaucracy vibe doesn't really translate into the films, but it's very clear in the books.

A weird side-effect of watching the film has been to make me realise that I really enjoy hearing both Russian and Polish spoken - lovely spluttering languages, full of snap and pop.